John Cusack At The Helm For `Methusalem`

September 08, 1989|By Lawrence Bommer.

Screen star John Cusack, recently seen in the much acclaimed ``Say Anything,`` turns theater director Friday as he launches ``Methusalem,`` a 1922 drama by Ivan Goll. Opening at the Edge of the Lookingglass Theatre, this New Criminals Theatre staging will employ a commedia dell`arte treatment, complete with masks and whiteface, and a live band to depict Goll`s satire of a billionaire shoe manufacturer and the banalities and excesses of the ruling elite he represents. In true commedia style, the action will be provocatively directed at the audience. Jeremy Piven takes the title role in this Chicago premiere.

``Methusalem`` runs through Oct. 15 at 62 E. 13th St.; 939-4017.

Other theater openings of note:

``The Taming of the Shrew,`` Friday, Chicago Shakespeare Company at the Theatre Building, 1225 W. Belmont Ave.; 327-5252: John Kevin Forsythe, a director who views ``Taming`` as ``the world`s first fractured fairy tale,``

revives Shakespeare`s crazy courtship comedy, with Bruce Orendorf as Petruchio and Jacqueline Williams as the shrewish maid he tries to tame.

``Opal,`` Friday, Tripod Theatrical Productions at Okefenokee Playhouse, 1257 W. Loyola Ave.; 275-7649: Steven Fedoruk directs an original adaptation of stories taken from Opal Whiteley`s childhood diary. Written in 1906 by 7-year-old Whiteley, the rediscovered diary timelessly conveys a little girl`s search for love and her all-consuming fears and hopes.

``Lyle,`` Wednesday, Forum Theatre, 5620 S. Harlem Ave.; 496-3000:

William Pullinsi and Tony D`Angelo present the $350,000 premiere production of a new musical comedy by Charles (``Applause,`` ``Bye Bye Birdie``) Strouse.

``Lyle`` is based on Bernard Waber`s children`s stories about the misadventures of young Lyle in big bad New York City. There Lyle encounters a pair of once-famous vaudevillians, a Midwestern family torn from its roots, a singing minister, Little League baseball and Radio City Music Hall.

``Soul Survivor,`` Wednesday, Bailiwick Repertory, 3212 N. Broadway;

883-1090: Michael Ryczek directs the final production of the theater`s Gay & Lesbian Series, Anthony Bruno`s sensual romance about one man`s attempt to deal with the death of his lover.

871-1212. The world premiere of Chicago playwright Virginia Smiley`s semi-surreal spectacle uses dance, masks, elaborate costumes and a flock of actors to probe the obsessions of ``the above average birdwatcher.``

``The Wings of Moony Fishbein,`` Thursday, Webster Circle Theatre and Chicago Cooperative Stage, 2074 N. Leavitt St.; 235-7763: A world premiere by Ron Mark (author of ``Mortal Risk``), ``Wings`` is set in Chicago in 1949. It tells how the title character ``confronts the heroism of sacrifice, the terror of his first moral decision and the hilarity of growing up.``

``A Body Can Be a Worry to Anyone or a Box to Contain Our Solutions,``

Thursday, Theater Oobleck, 3829 N. Broadway; 384-3346: The never-predictable Oobleckers` September offering details the big-city adventures of a certain Verandah, who, instead of encountering great thinkers at the University of Chicago, finds ``smoke-puffing students and Tinkertoy housing projects.``